Lane stood next to Cal and she was impressed watching him interact with his nephew. But she knew she shouldn’t be. Cal had always had a natural way with people. He was patient with Lane and helped him carefully pick the berries and when they had filled up their baskets, he looked over at her. She had never thought of herself as maternal but when she looked at Lane, she wanted to hold him close and keep him safe forever.
“Thank you.”
“For?” she asked, trying to play it cool.
“This. I did need to be outside,” he admitted.
“I’m glad. I owe you so much more than I can ever repay you, Cal,” she admitted. She’d sort of used him in a way that she knew wasn’t fair. But he had been the only person she’d felt she could be herself with.
“I think we should let the past die,” he said. “Maybe figure out a way to move forward.”
“As friends, right?”
He quirked one eyebrow at her. “If that’s what you want.”
She didn’t know what she wanted. “I just like being around you. I’m not ready to talk about why I left but I want you to know that you brought me a lot of comfort when I was alone those first few years in New York City.”
He nodded. “See, when you say things like that you confuse me. You always have and I wish there was some way I could just forget you and let you go. But there is a part of me that has always wanted you.”
She knew that he didn’t like wanting her but it made her heart feel lighter when he said that. She leaned in closer to him. Their eyes met and she felt a zing go through her. His lips when they brushed against hers were firm yet soft at the same time.
He put his hand on the side of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair as she tipped her head to the side, deepening the kiss. He tasted better than she remembered. His kiss had a sophistication to it that he hadn’t had when they’d been teens.
But the attraction that had been between them? That had been dormant all these years, but now, it sprang to life. She shivered, shifting closer to him, putting her hand on his chest as he thrust his tongue deep into her mouth.
She barely heard the sound of a car door closing but Cal pulled back. His lips were moist and swollen from their kiss. Her own were tingling and she rubbed her finger over them.
“That just reinforces my confusion.”
Chapter Six
Cal took Lane home, trying to forget about that kiss. He didn’t know what had come over him. He wasn’t in the market for a girlfriend and to be perfectly honest, even if he was, Amelia would be the last woman he’d consider. She had baggage and they had history.
He was a forward-looking guy.
Or so he’d always thought. He pulled under the wrought-iron sign that said ‘The Delaneys’ and drove straight to the newly remodeled ranch house. When he’d gotten his signing bonus with the NFL, the first thing he did was redo the house. Not just for Rose and Braden, who’d lived there full time, but because he wanted this to be a new era for his family.
No more fighting and robbing, no more curses and bad juju that they’d never been able to outrun. Their father, despite his drinking, had worked hard and provided for them. His brothers had careers, respectable ones, though some would argue both himself and Finn making their living playing games wasn’t respectable. But he knew differently.
He pulled his pickup off to the side of the driveway and stared at the big house that had every fancy luxury Rose had wanted. And then, he just started sobbing. He couldn’t help it. His heart was one big open wound at this moment. Lane slept quietly in his car seat and Cal was looking at the future and seeing that it was hollow, empty.
Kissing Amelia wasn’t going to change that.
Nothing had…and nothing would. Pumping money into the local economy by starting Outlaw Tequila and training kids at the high school to work the vats under strict supervision. It was okay, but he was never going to do enough for his family not to be remembered as a bunch of outlaws.
The outlaws Delaney.
He wiped his eyes and started moving again. He had to know his boundaries. He’d tried, God knows that he had. But it was time to just be what he was. His generation wasn’t going to be the one to break the curse. Maybe little Lane’s would be.
He parked the car in front of the house and got his nephew out of the back seat. Mrs. Hanson’s car was in the driveway. She was a forty-year-old woman whose daughter was Braden’s assistant at Outlaw Tequila and she often helped them babysit Lane, as she had before the party. He noticed that Braden’s car was in the driveway, but Finn’s was gone.
It was probably a good thing—he was itching for a fight. Finn always was. His brother was never happy unless he was fighting or driving 300 miles an hour. Cal thought that was the only way Finn had learned to protect the vulnerability his middle brother liked to pretend he didn’t have.
He carried Lane into the house, hearing the sound of voices in the kitchen. Using the sleeping toddler as an excuse to avoid them, he went up the stairs to Lane’s room. It was attached to Rose’s, but he ignored that. Didn’t even glance at the open door that led to her room.
He saw that she’d left out his pajamas on the changing table and a book. She’d always like to get things ready in the morning before she left. Damn.
He’d thought he could avoid this by coming upstairs but it wasn’t helping.
He changed Lane and tucked him into his toddler bed that had a racecar frame. He kissed his nephew before making sure the nanny cam was on and logging into his app to check on him.
“Cal, is that you up there?” Braden called.
“Yes. Just putting Lane to bed. He’s fast asleep,” Cal said, knowing he was talking too much but unable to stem the flow of words.
The doorbell rang as he was coming down the stairs and Braden answered it. There was Amelia. She had changed clothes, and now wore a pair of jeans and sleeveless top.
“I made a casserole for you. It’s Delilah’s recipe so should be delicious,” she said.
Cal stayed where he was on the stairs for a moment, just looking at her. Technically, she was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. She always took his breath away.
She noticed him coming down the stairs and smiled over at him and a jolt of lust went through him. Damn. He wanted her. Right now, he just needed someone to hold and to forget for a few hours.
He couldn’t use her like that. They were neighbors of a sort and he respected her dad.
But another part of him thought, she was here and smiling at him… Why not just see what happened?
“Want to join us for dinner?” he asked, taking the casserole dish from her. It smelled delicious.
“If you don’t mind the company, I’d love to stay,” she said.
“It would probably be good for us to have someone else to talk to,” Braden said. “Otherwise, I’ll just talk shop.”
“He’s a crazy workaholic,” Cal said, stepping back as Amelia entered the foyer and walked toward the kitchen.
Mrs. Hanson was in there, but she had her bag on her shoulder and her keys in her hand.
“I’m heading out now. I can come back tomorrow if you need me to watch Lane. But this weekend, I’m working at one of the charity booths at the Bluebonnet Festival.”
“I’ll text you once we know what we are doing with Lane tomorrow,” Cal said, walking her out and then returning to the kitchen where Braden had set three places at the island.
Amelia was laughing at something his brother had said and he stood and watched her, wanted her. He didn’t censor himself. He wasn’t able to be civilized or play any kind of game right now.
She glanced up as Braden left the room and their eyes met, and he knew she could read his thoughts. They weren’t that hard to decipher at this moment. Her lips parted, and she drew her tongue over them. He groaned.
But at that moment Braden came back into the kitchen with three longneck bottles of beer and he turned away. He could wait until after they ate but if she looked at hi
m like that again, he knew he’d be hard pressed to walk away.
*
Amelia was the first to admit that she still had no idea what she was doing at the Delaney ranch but she was having a good time with Braden and Cal. It had been a while since she’d associated anything good with her hometown. She had to admit that postponing coming home might not have been her smartest idea. Braden and Cal were funny together. Cal was taller and more muscular, bearing a distinct resemblance to his ancestors, whereas Braden looked more like his mother’s people. Their temperaments were different too.
Braden had a dry sense of humor and didn’t hesitate to needle his oldest brother. A lot. Which was fun to see because that one time she’d seen him in New York, he’d been very much the celebrity football player and everyone had treated him with a sort of deference.
She hadn’t expected to run into him and his girlfriend at the United Way gala but there they had been. She had wanted to be all cool and sophisticated when she saw him but instead, she’d stared at him until her dinner partner had offered to introduce them. She hadn’t realized the boy she’d known—and that was how she’d been thinking of Cal until that moment—had grown up and taken the world by storm.
“Thanks for this,” Braden said, as he cleaned up the dishes. “I have some work to do, so if you don’t mind, I’ll say good night, Amelia.”
“Not at all. I probably won’t stay much longer,” she said.
“I was hoping you’d stay for a bit,” Cal said. “We never got to finish our conversation earlier.”
She nodded. Yeah, the one where she explained why she’d ghosted him back in high school. She hadn’t talked to anyone about it. Well, that wasn’t technically true. She and her sisters had discussed it the night she’d found out. They’d sat on the floor of her walk-in closet, huddled close together, trying to make sense of the fact that she wasn’t technically a Corbyn.
“I’d like to then,” she said as Braden left. She got up and put the lid on her casserole dish and put it in the fridge while Cal put the dishes in the dishwasher. She was struck by how normal this was. And for a moment, she was glad she’d been able to give them this. She knew that life for the Delaney boys wasn’t going to be normal for a while but little moments like this one would help.
“Want to sit on the front porch swing?” she suggested. Partly because it was a gorgeous April evening, but mostly because she didn’t trust herself alone with Cal in the family room.
“Sure,” he said. “Want another drink?”
“I can’t. I’m driving,” she said.
“Iced tea?”
“Yes, please,” she said.
He poured two drinks and she looked around the house as he did it. “This place is really nice. I remember it from when we dated, but it seems you’ve done a lot of work to it.”
“Yeah, totally gutted the house and redid everything. None of my ancestors had ever put any money into the ranch so it was definitely needed.”
“It’s nice.”
“Thanks,” he said, leading the way to the front porch.
She sat down on the swing and he sat next to her, kicking it into motion with the heel of his foot. She held her mason jar tea glass in her hands and tipped her head back to stare out at the open range around the Delaney house.
“So…you were going to tell me why you had to leave,” he said.
“Yeah, I was,” she said, turning to face him. She’d told a watered-down version of the truth to people before. She found that most people only asked about her past and why she’d left to move a conversation forward. She could usually distract them with easy things that they probably already assumed about her, like she’d discovered that small-town life wasn’t big enough for her, that sort of thing. But Cal wasn’t going to be fooled by that.
“You said it was complicated,” he prompted.
“It is. Um, how much do you want to know?” she asked after a few moments.
“Whatever you want to tell me. You brought it up so obviously it’s on your mind,” he said. “Our past is just that—the past. But if it’s something that is between us now, then we should deal with it.”
“I don’t remember you being a ‘deal with it’ kind of guy,” she said. “You were always more of a ‘let’s do something physical’ so I don’t have to talk.”
He laughed and she smiled.
“Yeah, well, when I played college ball, my coaches weren’t big fans of me fighting things out. One of them was a real mentor to me. He told me that if you had a plan in place, every situation was winnable.”
“Do you think that’s true?” she asked. She had been in so many losing positions over the course of her life, ones where she’d had to brazen it out or just walk away.
“Most of the time. Having a plan, dealing with the awkward shit, that always makes it easier. Even when I used to fight with the guys, the problem would still be there the next day,” he said.
“I like that. Well, um, actually the reason I left is the reason I came back. Something happened between me and my parents and I’ve never faced it, never been able to deal with it. But time is sort of running out, and my dad told me either come home and face it or regret it the rest of my life.”
Cal arched one eyebrow at her as he stretched his arm along the back of the swing.
“That sounds a bit melodramatic for Jasper, but hey, he got you to come home.”
She nodded. “He wasn’t being dramatic. Mom has…Mom is sick. The doctors don’t have a full diagnosis yet but they haven’t ruled out Alzheimer’s.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know,” he said.
“Yeah, we’re keeping it quiet until we know more,” she said.
“So whatever it is, it’s something you want to talk with her about before it’s too late,” he said.
“Yes, though it’s something that you never want to talk to your parents about,” she said, starting as vaguely as she could.
“I can think of a few things…sex, drugs, partying too much,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s about it,” she said.
*
She was so quiet about this. Given the way she’d brought it up and then retreated, he wondered if he should just let it go. But she wanted to talk…he could see it. He’d seen the signs in Rose and because he was her older brother, he’d never been able to listen. He’d always been too ready to tell her the right way to do something or try to caution her against making the same mistakes he had.
This was his chance to make up for that. And he’d be a gentleman. No noticing that her lipstick had worn off and the natural color of her lips was a rosy pink. No catching that super soft strand of hair that kept brushing against his wrist with his finger. He would be nothing but being a friend. He could do this.
Yeah, right, his libido said.
But he wasn’t ruled by his dick.
Not tonight.
“Who partied like that? Your mom?” he asked. He couldn’t see either Jasper or Mrs. Corbyn as wild party animals. Jasper Corbyn was born wearing ironed jeans and a button-down shirt. He could let loose on occasion but usually it was when he was sitting in his backyard drinking Wild Turkey and smoking a cigar.
“Yes, my mom,” she said, drawing her leg up underneath her.
Well, hell, how was he supposed to not notice how long her legs were, now that she was canted toward him on the bench.
“What did she do?”
“Um, I feel silly saying this, but you can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t know what you think about me but I’m not really one to stand around talking about people in town.”
She shook her head and put her hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t mean it that way. Once you hear it, you’ll understand.”
He was starting to get a bit worried. Was her mom’s health issue due to some sort of addiction? Having grown up with an alcoholic father, he understood what it was like to live with an addict.
“Is it drugs? Don’t worry, whatever it is, I’m here for you. I won’t talk to anyone about anything you share with me. I hated that everyone in town knew Dad was a drunk. It made it harder to pretend to be like everyone else.”
She squeezed his shoulder again. “I know. I remember when he had to spend sixty days in the county lockup for drinking and driving. I told everyone who asked that he was home every night.”
He smiled at her. “You were a good girlfriend, Ams. Why did you leave like that? I know you well enough to realize you’re stalling.”
She sighed, pulling her hand from his and wrapping her own arms around her waist. She looked at her lap and then out at the sky, which was darkening with twilight. The landscape lights were coming on and the porch had an imitation flicking gaslight that came on as well.
“I found out that very afternoon that Jasper isn’t my biological father.”
He shook his head, not sure he’d heard that right. “What?”
“That was my reaction, too,” she said.
“Why would they suddenly tell you that at sixteen?” he asked. “I’m shocked. I never saw anything about your family to make me think that Jasper wasn’t your dad.”
“Me either,” she said. “They told me because… Do remember when Mom took me to Houston for that blood test?”
“I do because you were absent from school for two days,” he said. She’d been his first serious girlfriend. So, everything had been so intense. When Amelia left, his father had told him that it was the Delaney curse and to remember that they weren’t meant for a forever kind of love. And Cal had realized his father knew what he was talking about.
“Um, my biological father had contacted my mom because he had cleaned up his act and his girlfriend had a baby boy who was sick. He wasn’t a match and he knew about me, so he got in contact. It turned out I was a bone marrow match for the baby and so my parents had to tell me the truth.”
“Well, shit. That’s a lot for anyone to take in. No wonder you wigged out,” he said. It didn’t justify the way she’d left but he understood it. He had never blamed her for leaving him—he knew there was more at play. He’d never guessed this though.
Her Texas Ex Page 6
